A recent article in the New Yorker entitled “Why Walking Helps Us Think” provided the inspiration that “since the time of the peripatetic Greek philosophers, many other writers have discovered a deep, intuitive connection between walking, thinking and writing.” In a subsequent piece in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik wrote, “How vain it is to sit and write when you have not stood up to live!”
During my year in Kyoto I discovered the mindful movement and meditatiive connection to my own inspiration through hours of endless and aimless walking while intimately discovering the oldest ancient city of Japan. Kyoto is precisedly laid out in great detail as a walkable city, whereby most residents make their way through their daily routines on foot, bike or train. During my year living in Kyoto, I walked over 600 miles through rain, heat or snow. Walking was one of the essential rituals I discovered as one form of my daily meditation practice. It became as routine as eating or brushing my teeth.
It was during my long afternoon walks among the Japanese Maple trees, Zen gardens and narrow streets that poems would effortlessly come forth. During my many strolls along the Kamigawa River inspired ideas would come from the higher realms. Often I would have to stop somewhere so that I could sit on a bench and write in my notebook everything that was coming through me and onto the page.
There is no coincidence that many great thinkers and writers throughout the ages have made long walks part of their daily routines. In one of my all-time favorite books, Daily Routines, great thinkers and creators from Albert Einstein to Thoreau to Carl Jung all prioritized the daily walk as a practice in which many of their most inspired ideas came forth.
Wherever you find yourself, amidst whatever life circumstances, the mindful practice of a daily walk incorporates movement and meditation and opens your mind to a voice that cannot be heard unless we break free for a window in nature every day.
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.”
-Soren Kierkedgaard
